Under the Mamluks of Egypt and Syria, there was a wide array of headgear. Turco-Mongolian styles of headwear brought from Central Asia and the Eurasian Steppes were the de rigueur amongst the ruling military elitè, especially during the early Bahri Dynasty. Due to the highly stratified nature of Mamluk society, the type of headwear served as a social, religious, and vocational demarcation between the different strata of society.

C) Headcovering

Men

One has to keep in mind, though, that the hats which disappeared at the end of the Mamluk Empire in the early sixteenth century bore little resemblance to the ones Mamluk officials had on their heads at the beginning of their reign in the mid-thirteenth century.¹ The headwear of the Turco-Mongolian Bahri dynasty in the late 13th century slowly disintegrated from common use and was supplanted by the Circassian type of headwear as the ethnic Circassians of the Burji dynasty assumed power in the late 14th century until they were conquered by the Ottoman Turks in the early 16th century.

Despite enjoying a short-lived period of revival even after the Ottoman conquest, Mamluk headgear was completely wiped from Egyptian court fashion, and it was replaced with Ottoman turbans and caftans. Ottoman court costumes took over Arab fashion until the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1920.

1- ʿImāma عِمامة

The Caliph, the Sultan, judges (Kādi), and learned clergy (ʿulamā’) all wore giant turbans per their status. Despite being only a titular figurehead Caliph, the Abbasid Caliph in the Mamluk court maintained the long-established Abbasid courtly splendor in Baghdad, wearing a fine round turban in dynastic black, with a trailing end-piece (rafraf) at the back, about two feet long and one foot wide, reaching from the top to the bottom of the turban.

During the ceremony of accession to office, the Mamluk sultan received his official insignia: a black turban, a black robe, and a sword. The black turban Sultan Baybars I (r. 658– 6/1260–77) received for his coronation was apparently woven of gold material.

High civil servants wore a turban called baqyār. The finest were of embroidered dimyāṭī linen (ʿamal dimyāṭ marqūm), but they could also be of ṭarḥ, a fine Alexandrian fabric that was most likely linen.²

 

 

 

2- Ṭāqiyyah طاقية

A Ṭāqiyya refers to a tall, cylindrical cap worn in the 15th century. The Ṭāqiyya later came to denote a low-rise version that was worn as a foundational layer to the turban-cap headwear (coming to replace the qalansuwa) in the Arabic-speaking world.

Its origin is inconclusive; some believe it has Arabic roots from the word Ṭāq (Arch or collar) or that it has come into the Arabic-speaking world from Persia or Central Asia. 

Al-Maqrizi chronicles in his travelogues describing Egypt during the Mamluk Burji dynasty that common men, soldiers, princes, and officials wore high, cylindrical hats, or ṭāqqiyas, without wrapping a turban around them. This was said to be a custom inherited from their predecessor, the Ayyubid dynasty, who in turn took it from the Seljuks, who wore triangular, up-brimmed hats as headwear, the sharbush. It was a glaring deviation from previous Arab ruling dynasties that kept the ongoing tradition of wearing a cap coupled with a turban. Al-Maqrizi notes that it was not an unusual sight to be seen in the streets or markets wearing a hat alone. These caps came in a wide range of colors, such as green, yellow, and blue. The hat was brimless, cylindrical, and roughly 19 cm long.

In the reign of Al-Malik an-Nasir, nicknamed Ibn Qalawun (r. 1285–1341 C.E. ), a type of hat called the “Circassian hat” came into fashion. This Circassian hat was a cylindrical hat with a flat top. It used to be made in several sizes and colors and was one-sixth of an ell high. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, it grew taller until it reached two-thirds of an ell, and the upper part took the shape of a small dome. The base part that rests on the head is encircled by fur. At the end of the fifteenth century, it was manufactured in a two-colored version. The lower part was apparently green, and the upper part black.

 

 

 

 

3- Caps/Qalansuwa قلنسوة

The high qalansuwa (cap), which under the Umayyads had been a symbol of royalty, and under the Abbasids was fashionable in Iraq and Iran, became in the later Middle Ages, the common head covering of dervishes. Abū Zayd, the trickster hero of Maqamat Al-Hariri, is frequently depicted in the manuscripts wearing a qalansuwa (usually a high one, or qalansuwa ṭawīla). Usually, the qalansuwa was a simple cone, but it could also be cut to curve around the side of the face and extend down the back of the neck. Sometimes the qalansuwa is worn alone, sometimes with a simple crisscrossed winding cloth (taẖfifah), and sometimes with a full turban cloth wrapped around it. In manuscript illustrations, the qalansuwa is represented in a variety of colors, including brown, yellow, grey, and red. There is even a depiction of a qalansuwa, totally black in front and totally grey in the back, with a narrow red band on the lower back edge.

Although the high qalansuwa had become the mark of mendicants and members of the demi-monde in the later Middle Ages, the lower version was still worn by people of substance and could be adorned, for example, with strings of pearls. People working outdoors sometimes are depicted wearing a low-pointed, brimmed, sun hat that appears to have been made of straw.

Surviving Mamluk caps show there was an array of construction techniques and decoration methods. Most caps were made from a base fabric, either linen or wool, and were covered with a silken outer layer. The cap was constructed from a long, wide rectangular band, and the crown was made from triangular panels that are sewn around the band that meet at the center top.

 

 

 

 

 

Male figures wearing caps with no turban. The cap is either semi-spherical or cone-shaped with a golden contrasting band at the bottom. Maqamat Al-Hariri, 13th century.

4- Sarāqūsh/sarāqūj سَراقوج/سَراقوش

A hat of Tartarian (Turkic)/Central Asian origin. It was a high, pointed, conical hat with a brim that most frequently was turned up, but also could be turned down. The saraquj was usually white or a light tan. It could also be two-toned, with a brim and a colored crown. The point of the conical crown could be plain or have a decorative metallic knob, pointed plaquette, tuft, or long plumes extending from it. The cone could be simple or paneled in vertical sections, and a colored taẖfifa might be crisscrossed around it with a brooch or plaquette pinned to the point where the cloth overlapped.

 

 

 

 

 

5- Sharbūsh شَربوش

On other public occasions, Mamluk sultans would wear different kinds of headgear. In the early days of the Mamluk sultanate, this could be the sharbūsh, a headgear that resembled, according to al-Maqrīzī, a stiff triangular-shaped cap with a triangular front, which in some instances appears to have been a metallic plaque. It was sometimes trimmed with fur. It was used by the Ayyubids (1174-1250) and the Turkish baḥri Mamluks (1250-1380), but it was abolished by the Circassian burji Mamluks (1380-1517). A turban can be wrapped around it to form the taẖfifa. In the early Mamluk period, it was often bestowed on Mamluk amirs as well.

The sharbūsh seems to have been quite popular with Turkish rulers of the tenth to thirteenth centuries and seems to have come with the Turks from the east. In Egypt, the sharbūsh was apparently introduced by the Ayyubids, and its existence was confirmed until the time of the Bahri Mamluks. Finally, we learn from al-Maqrīzī (who does not provide us with any reason for this) that the wearing of the sharbūsh was abolished by the Circassian sultans. Maybe the sharbūsh was too Turkish or Mongolian for them.

 

 

 

6- zamṭ زَمط

During the late Circassian period, the so-called zamṭ hat witnessed a breakthrough in Mamluk fashion. Originally, it seems that it had been a headgear of the lower classes. Then the Mamluk elite adopted it and made it exclusively theirs. In the year 840/1436, Sultan Barsbāy (r. 825–41/1422–38) forbade every fallāh (peasant) and every slave from wearing the red zamṭ. The zamṭ was described as a red brimless hat with shaggy coarse fur. Arnold von Harrf’s description of a Mamluk soldier wearing  this headgear goes like this:

“… and wears on his head a high red hat, without a brim, about three spans high, with long wool hanging from it about a span long.” 

 

 

7- Kalawta كلوته

The Kalawta cap in the Fatimid and especially the Ayyubid dynasty transcended into the Mamluk dynasty. It was changed from yellow to red at the behest of Sultan al-Ashraf Khalil (r. 689–93/1290–93). The kalawta came in a plethora of shapes and sizes across the centuries. It was made in earlier times from wool, but later gained opulence and was made from extravagant fabrics and embroidered with gold.

The kalawata had a similar fate to the many caps and garments in Mamluk times that originally belonged to the military personnel and later entered civilian usage. A turban can be wrapped around a kalawta to form the taẖfifa. In fact, it was so symbolic of the Mamluk military that members of the group as a whole were sometimes referred to as the mukalwatun, just as they were referred to since Seljuq times as arbab al-suyuf (masters of the sword). A variant of the kalawta became a common cap for schoolboys, much as military caps were common for students in Central and Eastern Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Surprisingly, quite a number of these kalawta caps have survived from Egypt and can be found in several museum collections. These caps were worn by men, women, and children in Mamluk Egypt. Decoration techniques varied from quilting to embroidery to appliquéwork.

 

8- Taẖfifa Kabira/Saghira تخفيفة كبيرة/صغيرة

The taẖfifa, a simple cloth wrapped in a criss-cross manner to fashion a smaller version of a turban, seems to have taken on a more elaborate form in the Mamluk period.

As the kallawtah caps with the wrapped turban around them grew larger and were hard to handle on some occasions, the Mamluks started to wear only a small, light turban, the taẖfifa ṣaġhīra. The first mention of it can be found in the writings of Ibn Iyās. Sultan Barqūq (r. 784–91, 792–801/1382–89, 1390–99) had a takhfīfah ṣaghīrah on his head when he appeared in public in the year 796/1394. Apparently, the taẖfifa started to become increasingly popular only after the mid-fifteenth century, as we do not find any mention of a takhfīfah in al-Maqrīzī’s Khiṭaṭ, which usually mentions all aspects of contemporary dress. It seems that there were two kinds of takhfīfah ṣaghīrah, i.e., the round one (mudawwarah) and the smooth one (mumallasah). Needless to say, these too started to increase in size over time.

After the year 872/1467, the takhfīfah ṣaghīrah is mentioned on a more regular basis, and by the end of the fifteenth century, it seems clearly established that it could be worn by Mamluk amirs at certain public outings, but it was not acceptable to wear it at very official occasions.

At the end of the fifteenth century, another type of takhfīfah increased in popularity among the fashion mavens of the Mamluk military elite, the takhfīfah kabīrah (the big takhfīfah turban). This kind of takhfīfah, worn for special occasions, was the result of the ongoing enlargement of the takhfīfah ṣaghīrah. The amirs even started to put horns on it.

The largest version of this type was called nāʿūrah (waterwheel), and the Mamluk sultan wore it as a crown. Apparently, it reached very impressive sizes. The Venetian ambassador Domenico Trevisan, who was received by Sultan Qānṣawh al-Ghawrī (r. 906– 22/1501–16) in 1512, recalls that the sultan was sitting on his richly decorated bench (masṭabah) wearing a great turban (“fez”) with two horns which were the length of half an arm.

women

As in earlier periods, women wore a wide range of compound headdresses consisting of one of a variety of caps, crowns, headbands, winding scarves, wimples, and bonnets. Women also wore several new and different hats from Central Asia and Mongolia that had come into the Arab world.

1- Headscarves and Face veils المقَانع والنُقُبْ

A Muslim married woman would not appear outside without veiling her head and face unless she were a female servant or slave. Women used Mindils, which usually meant a small kerchief, but was a rather large knee-length head shawl, in addition to the veils mentioned in previous eras. (See headwear articles in the Abbasid and Fatimid periods for more information)

Women in the Mamluk era wore niqabs (a long face veil with two eyeholes). They wore silken burqu’ (a face veil that revealed the eyes) in black, green, white, and blue colors. Another type of face veil discerned from artistic interpretation was a netted cloth that was draped over the entire face. 

The eye veil, shaʿriyya, continued to be used as well. Also, the Ṭarha, the designated head-shawl donned by the Abbasid Judiciary, was popular with the Cairene ladies acting as a veil from the 12th century onwards; however, it did not take the form of that worn by the Mamluk qadis, but the only detailed description of this veil occurs in the 19th century. The miqnaʿa veil, which fell from the head to the waist, was generally made of inexpensive, lightweight cotton, but there were exceptions. One purchased with a tarha for the wife of Sultan Qalaun in 1337 cost a total of 7000 dinars.

Anselmo Adorno, a Genoese merchant traveling in the Middle East in 1470, remarked upon the pieces of silk with two cut eye-holes that Alexandrian women wore and added that women in Cairo and Damascus also dressed in like manner. The 16th-century German nobleman, Martin Baumgarten, in his travelogue through Egypt, Arabia, Palestine, and Syria, similarly remarked on Mamluk women’s veiling habits. “Women are very decently habited all over their body, having their faces covered with a thin black veil through which they can see everything, but nobody can see them”.³ In Arnold von Harff’s pilgrimage to Egypt and other regions, he described the attire of Cairene women:

“….. When they walk or ride in the streets they all have black veils before the face, so they cannot be recognized“. 

 

 

 

The veil, whatever length and style covered the headdress, and this was also liable to governmental restrictions. Again, there seems to be no one reason for state intervention, except that ostentatious luxury always caused a hostile theological reaction, and so the sumptuary restraints may reflect the growing influence of the ulama in the Mamluk administration.

Below is a scene from another Maqamat manuscript of mourners at a graveside that includes two women crouched over a tomb. Following accepted social customs, as they are in a public situation, they are enveloped in concealing garments and closely veiled. They are both shrouded in voluminous wraps, one in blue, the other in white. Both women are wearing variants of a face veil (burqu). Their hair seems to be confined beneath tightly wound black headscarves, which are pulled well down over their foreheads; it also serves as a means of preventing the outer wrap from slipping off the wearer’s head. The woman in blue wears a burqu, consisting of a narrow red band from which a long rectangular white cloth is suspended, leaving a space above for the eyes, effectively concealing her face from the forehead to below the chin. The woman in white seemingly wears a simpler version — a plain white veil extending from below the eyes to cover the lower part of her face.⁴

 

 

Certain questions of how such veils were constructed and fastened may be resolved by comparison with finds from Mamluk levels of the excavations of Quseir al-Qadim — a port site on the Red Sea from which two veils were found, and at Qasr Ibrim situated on the Nile in southern Egypt. Gillian Eastwood‘s article “A Medieval Face Veil From Egypt” details that three examples of the burqu veil have been recently excavated at Qusayr al-Qadim and Qasr Ibrim in Upper Egypt, dating back to the Mamluk period. The least damaged is made from two pieces of undyed plain-weave linen to form a complete length of 61 cm (24″ ) and a maximum width of 19 cm (7.5″), found at Qusayr Al-Qadim. The Qasr Ibrim fragment is made from one piece of crimson plain-weave silk cut across about 4 cm (1.5″) from the top to form the eye slit. The forehead band and lower section are joined at the bridge of the nose by a leather plait and an iron ring, decorated with five beads.

In examining these extant 14th-century burqu veils, one may find that their overall appearance and construction methods are not too dissimilar to their modern or contemporary versions.

 

Mamluk face veils (burqu’), ca. 14th-15th century, from Gillian Eastwood’s article “A Medieval Face Veil From Egypt”.

 

 

2- ʿIṣāba عِصابة

The term ʿiṣāba in the Fatimid and previous periods referred to a headband of either cloth or precious metal set with jewels costing 70 or 80 dinars, which, by its cost, attracted the attention of government or religious functionaries.

The cloth headbands varied in width from slim ribbons to large folded kerchiefs that covered the entire forehead. There were many ways a woman could wear her headband. When stepping outside the house, a woman wears the ʿiṣāba wound turban-like around that part of the overwrap (izar) or veil which covered the hair, similar in fashion perhaps to that of Bedouin women or how Egyptian rural women wear their rabtah today, except that it was sometimes richly embroidered and adorned with precious stones. Bedouin and rural village women in Jordan, Syria, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, up until recently, could be seen wearing their ʿiṣāba in this manner. 

Indoors, moneyed women usually wore metal headbands as a diadem on their bare hair or forehead as a head ornament. Women of higher society had them studded with gems in the manner of a crown or a diadem.

The infamous matter of ittifaq, a black slave-woman, was bestowed a bedecked diadem by her three consecutive slave masters, with its worth reaching more than 100,000 gold dīnārs, earning the disdain of contemporary religious censures and the precedence of being chronicled in history books. In sūlūk, Al-maqrizi recounts that on the occasion of Lady Tulu Qartuqa, wife of Emir Yelbugha al-Yahyawi and sister of Sultan Qalawun’s wife, giving birth, the sultan accorded her with great festivities for seven days and nights, and gifted her with a headband set with all kinds of jewels estimated to be around 50,000 dinars.

Due to a lack of proper literary description, it is difficult to determine the shape and construction of these metal headbands. However, based on some pictorial representations, such as in (The Book of Fixed Stars), we can see that they were usually circular or semi-circular bands or a string of beads or pearls with a large centerpiece element in the middle. Descriptions of diadem-like headbands in the Geniza trousseaux lists in the Fatimid period show the elaborate nature of this costly headwear. They were inlaid with pearls and richly decorated with filigree that reached the price of 80 dinars.

In the Mamluk era, another variant of the ʿiṣāba was in vogue called the ʿiṣāba muqanzaʿa. Which was, in this case, a padded headdress of perhaps a crested shape (qanzaʿa: ‘tuft of hair, cock’s comb); no reference is made to jewels or precious metals embellishing it.

Unfortunately, there are no visual depictions of this headdress in Medieval Arab miniatures or artwork. In Rajab 876 A.H./1472 C.E., the Sultan Qaitbay published an order in Cairo that no woman should wear a crested bonnet (ʿiṣāba muqanzaʿa) or a silken saraqush. Further, the “paper” (padding) of the ʿiṣāba should be a third of an ell long and bear the stamp (khatm) of the Sultan on either side. Women got flurried and went out bare-headed, or without an ʿiṣāba, or, much against their will, with a long ʿiṣāba as ordered by the Sultan, but they would wear the proscribed headgear inside their houses. After a while, things quietened down, and the Cairene ladies wore what they liked, as before. I surmise that these Mongolian bonnets are the proscribed headwear called ʿiṣāba muqanzaʿa.

 

3-Ṭāqqiya طاقية

The adoption of male-style headgear, such as a certain type of ṭāqqiya, by Mamluk women is explained by al-Maqrizi as an attempt to counter the widespread homosexual passions of the elite and win back the hearts of their husbands. (Although in the same passage, al-Maqrizi says that Circassians who had begun wearing ornate turbanless ṭawāqi in public looked like women!).

The ṭāqqiya also came to be proscribed for women in an edict issued in 1426-27/830. Nasir ad-din b. Shibl, in 830 A.H., appointed a police inspector, forbidding women from wearing ṭāqqiya-caps. Perhaps we shall not go wrong in assuming that during the early 9th century of the Hijra, these caps were about two-thirds of an ell high, with tops shaped like domes padded with paper, and trimmed with beaver about an eighth of an ell wide. Al-maqrizi describes that the ṭaqqiya worn by women was similar to that of men, and due to sharp economic deterioration, women abandoned wearing expensive gold and silver jewelry and the wearing of silk, sufficing themselves with profusely ornamenting their caps with gold and silver.

 

4- Buẖnūq/Bukhnuq البُخنُق

The Bukhnuq, usually a cloth or a kerchief that’s tied under the chin, in Mamluk times, was a cap. The historian Al-Maqrizi explains that there was a certain dedicated market in Cairo for selling the Bukhnuq called “Souq Al-Bukhnuqiin” or Market of Bukhnuq, where several kinds of ṭāqqiya (cap) and Kūfiyya (coif/hood) were sold for young boys and girls. Since the attire of children was identical to that of adults but differed in the head coverings, instead of veils and turbans for adults, young children sufficed with small caps/coifs and hoods.

Geniza records provided us with an idea of the materials it was made from. One Geniza document records that a Bukhnuq made from Levant silk cost 7 dinars (gold coins) and a half, whereas a green one made from Al-Hurmuzi material cost 21 dinars and a half. Children’s Coptic tunics that have survived from the early Middle Ages show that hoods were attached to the tunic or worn as a separate article.

Several digitized European textile exhibitions and museum collections contain a variety of children’s caps, hoods, and bonnets from Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Algeria, dating to the 20th century and earlier, showcasing a continuous clothing heritage in the Arab world.

5- ʿImāma عمامة

In his book, Mamluk Costume by Leo Ary Mayer writes:

” … Women’s turbans were the subject of much controversy, and although it was often denied that they ever used them, the vigor with which theologians attack women who wear turbans … shows only too clearly the existence of such practices.” 

Several edicts issued by several Mamluk sultans attempting to ban the wearing of turbans by women uncovered the fact that it became an established headwear for women, although these bans probably meant the male-style turbans, since women had worn and continued to wear compound turban-like headdresses for centuries, all the way up to early modern times.

Mayer also notes that the word ʿImāma, turban par excellence, does occur in descriptions of turbans of women, as, e.g, in the edict of Muharram 662 A. H, forbidding women to wear turbans, or by Ibn al-Hajj, who mentions with disgust a turban resembling the “double hump of the dromedary.”  Also, similarly, a decree issued by the Mamluk Sultan Baibars in 1263 C.E. banned the wearing of the ʿImāma by women. Similar to the other statutes regulating the outerwear of women, it wasn’t regarded for long. We do have conflicting reports of women wearing turbans. For example, Arnold von Harff, during his visit to Egypt in the late 15th century, suggests female turbans had already fallen out of fashion around the time he recorded his visit.” … also the men wear turbans wound around the head, but not the women”.

Yet, Martin Baumgarten, in the early 16th century, witnessed that Mamluk women in Syria had donned turbans on their heads. “They use on their head turbans, each according to her quality, which they cover with a white scarf hanging down the ground”.

 6- Shāsh

The shāsh was a headcovering that looked like a camel’s hump, as one contemporary historian describes it, adorned with golden chains and gemstones. It was enormous, described as starting from the forehead and ending at the nape of the neck at the back. The headwear was so reprehensible that it caused discontent amongst both the clergy and the general public. Ibn Iyas’ account in his book Tarikh masr (“History of Egypt”) mentions this headwear as follows:

“In the month of Rajab, a woman saw the Prophet in her dream, saying: ‘forbid the people from wearing shāsh.” As this was a fashion invented by women, wearing a camel’s hump on their heads, measures about one cubit in length and a quarter in width, decorated with gold and pearls, and they were excessive and a sinful innovation.”

The headwear was embellished with gold and pearls and measured an ell in length and a quarter of an ell in height. An edict by Sultan Qalawun in 1291 CE banned women from wearing the large shāsh. Describing this headwear in his chronicles, Ibn Tughribardi wrote: ” I’ve also encountered the aforementioned shāsh, it is a kind of ornament worn in the fashion of the ornaments of brides, it was cumbersome in its making.”

7- Ṭartur/Ṭantour طرطور/طنطور

Mayer writes that during the second half of the 15th century, this unsightly thing disappeared (referring to the male-like turban) and a tall ṭarṭur or ṭanṭour came into fashion. The ṭarṭur or ṭanṭour is a tall headdress that’s shaped like an elongated cone, sometimes described as a steeple, and comes in a variety of lengths. A decorated and ornamented outer wrap covers it. The earliest depiction of this headdress is in Arnold von Harrf‘s travel account of visiting 15th-century Cairo. He commented on this headwear, saying: 

 

 “women wear a high thing on their heads like a goblet, which is wound about with fine cloths and ornaments, and they walk and ride in the streets”.

 

The auxiliary illustration provided in his descriptions exhibits a first-hand portrait of a contemporary 15th-century Cairine woman’s outdoor attire. Unfortunately, the ṭarṭur is concealed by the outer mantle, but from the silhouette, we can deduce that it is elongated with a flat top. 

 

There is a depiction of this headdress in the Mamluk manuscript rendition of the iskandarname produced during the late 15th century. Some of the ladies have tattoos between their eyebrows, and all the courtly females wear a high, cylindrical hat that is tied at the back with a ribbon. This headdress is not found in Timurid and Turkoman paintings; it is possible that the painter was attempting to represent a local headgear used by Mamluk ladies. It is also conceivable that he had access to fourteenth-century Ilkhanid or Mongol paintings in which courtly women also wear tall, cylindrical hats.⁵

This is mostly corroborated by literary sources of the period. Historians often described the glamour and pomp of the women of the Mamluk Sultans when they went outside during their various excursions into the outside world. Regarding their excursions, princesses are reported under al-Nāṣir
Muḥammad had gone racing on horses and played polo, dressed in yellow silk satin and wearing pointed bonnets (ṭarāṭīr) made of Russian leather and studded with gems and pearls.

The concubines wore a garment described as ‘kāmiliyya’. However, when under the reign of al-Nāṣir Muḥammad’s son al-Muẓaffar Ḥājjī, who was known for his dissolute lifestyle and his passion for black slave-girls, harem women went racing on their Arab horses dressed in colored silk satin and wearing their tall bejeweled bonnets, the chroniclers commented with disapproval, criticizing the sultan’s degenerate government.⁶

Also, in the early 16th century, Leo Africanus observed that the ladies of Cairo wore very costly, narrow, pipe-shaped headdresses measuring one palm (approximately 22 cm). Pierre Belon, in his 16th-century travel to Egypt, described Egyptian women wearing tall headdresses shaped like a tower.

The 17th-century scholar, Ibn Abi al-Suroor al-Bakri, describes this headdress as having a similar silhouette:

“Something called ṭarṭur happened in our time, it’s wide at the top and narrows at the bottom, Greek women and children of the Arab wear it on their heads. It’s sold for 7 (qurush) or less, so every woman of the Arabs or other if she has two (qurush) or more, she buys it, even peasant women. Some looked the most handsome, and some utterly hideous; even the slave women of all ethnicities wore it as well. The headwear was of the utmost condonable innovation”.⁷

Salomon Schweigger, who traveled to Egypt in 1608, provides a contemporary illustration of an early 17th—century female Egyptian costume, amongst it a depiction of two women, one riding a mule wearing the ṭarṭur. However, the shape illustrated here differs from the usual tartur, with a wide-brimmed top and a narrow bottom; instead, it is shaped like a cone or a steeple. It is more akin to the Lebanese version, rather than the Mongolian version.

However, it seems to have fallen completely out of fashion in Egypt thereafter, but continued to be a common headdress in the Levant in the 18th–19th century.

Starting from the 18th–19th century, the ṭarṭur was the traditional headdress amongst Levantine women, mainly amongst the Lebanese Maronite and Druze denominations, and also Palestinian and Syrian women. European and non-European travelers to the Levant often commented on the elaborate length and weight of this headdress and were told by locals that a woman has to be trained in wearing it since childhood.

The headdress was adjusted straight or tilted on either side, fixed on the head by a series of headbands and strings wound around the forehead and under the chin. The ṭarṭur is decorated by tiers of coins bound together by silken ribbons. Affluent women wore ṭarṭurs made from gold, studded with precious gemstones and pearls, while women of lower means wore ones made from silver, tin, or even wood. Then a thin silken or muslin veil is placed on top and used to hide the face or left to drape.

In his study of costumes in Lebanon, Maurice Chéhab states that the term “ṭanṭour” may be a distortion of the word “ṭarṭur”, which refers to a high cone-shaped headdress worn in the fifteenth century. According to Dozy, the latter term was already in usage previously, as it is found in the One Thousand and One Nights (Mamluk period, thirteenth to fifteenth centuries) to describe a woman’s headdress. 

Several hypotheses have been put forward on the origins of the ṭanṭour. Some assert that the Crusaders introduced it in Lebanon, while others assume, on the contrary, that it was brought back to Europe by the Crusaders, originating the hennin. For others, the tantour originated from China or Mongolia based on a headdress called the boqta. It is the traditional headwear of married Mongolian women, and indeed, the Mamluk headdress was referred to as “tatari”. (The Muslims used to refer to the Mongols as Tatars)

It could’ve come from the saukele, a tall, bejeweled conical headdress worn by married women from Central Asia. The fashions of the female members of the ruling Kipchak Mamluks, who were ethnic Turks, could have disseminated into the attire of Egyptian and Levantine women. This headdress was still worn by various Turkic and Mongolian women until the modern age.

Some have also found similarities with hats worn by the Christian women of Urfa (Turkey), as well as the headdresses of Jewish women in Algeria called Sarma.

The ṭarṭur was a male headgear as well, worn by Bedouins in Egypt. It was also headwear donned upon criminals and thieves to shame and ridicule them when they were paraded on the streets. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8- Sharbūsh شَربوش

The sharbūsh was worn by women as well, but it seems like it was reserved for the elite Mamluk women (who were of ethnically Turkic origin) of the caliphal court. It’s mentioned that Mamluk noble brides wore the sharbūsh on their wedding day.  Mamluk princesses in One Thousand and One Nights are said to have worn a sharbūsh on their wedding day on top of their exquisitely embroidered and decorated bridal attire. A general custom of a Mamluk wedding ceremony is that the groom tucks some gold coins into his bride’s sharbūsh. It’s mentioned that Prince Mintash, who was wedded to Princess Khund Sutiatah Leyla, tucked some gold coins that weighed 200 mithqals (a mithqal roughly equals 4.5 grams) onto his bride’s sharbūsh. A Khund is an honorary title of address during the Mamluk period, meaning mistress/madame. It’s a term of Persian origin, Khudawind خداوند.

 

 

 

9- Sarāqūsh/sarāqūj سَراقوج/سَراقوش

In the thirteenth century, it was worn by Tatar men, but it seems to have gone out of fashion by the fourteenth century. In the fifteenth century, it appears as a female headdress, which ʿAbd ʾAl-Rāziq interprets to be a silk cap with a short scarf, whereas Patricia Baker, based on Mayer’s identification, deduces that the saraqūsh is identical to the male headgear, which perhaps was the prompt for its prohibition to combat widespread transvestism during the time. 

The saraqūsh is mentioned in the edict of Sultan Qaitbay together with another headdress, the ʿiṣāba muqanzaʿa, which had a high tuft or crest. Women were forbidden from wearing either of these in public, and those caught doing so were publicly humiliated by the agents of the market inspector. Perhaps one of the reasons for this edict, at least in the case of the saraqsh, was that this was yet another instance of forbidden cross-dressing. In the privacy of the house, of course, the two head­coverings could be worn with impunity.

 

 

D) Footwear

Female boots were identical in shape to the light and fine boots worn by men (khuff). Around the home, the Mamluk woman wore slippers madas or more decorated shoes awtij a. Even the traditional wooden bath pattens (qubqab) with the two 4″ to 9″(10 to 23cm) high blocks placed horizontally across the sole under the heel and the ball of the foot were, if finances permitted, frequently inlaid with gold, silver, and mother-of-pearl. It was with such pattens that Shajar al-Durr was beaten to death. In the outdoors, madas could be worn, but more likely boots (khuff) of colored or white leather were used. Judging from the many examples illustrated in the manuscripts, boots (khuff) seem to have been the common outdoor footwear for women. Women’s boots could be long or mid-calf length. In some illuminations, they are depicted curling up and back to a point over the toes. They could be decorated with gold stamping at the ankles. The fashion for lavishly decorated khuff grew until it provoked state legislation in 751/1350, when a pair of the boots with the over-shoe sarmuza could cost from 100 to 500 dirhams in Cairo. A sarmuza could cost from 100 to 500 dirhams in Cairo. The customer was protected by the public watchdog, the muhtasib, who ensured that only good-quality leather, properly tanned, was used and sewn with short lengths of strong flax. He also checked that the padding between the ladies’ shoes’ inner and outer soles was not too excessive.

 

1. Fuess, A. (2008). Sultans with Horns: The Political Significance of Headgear in the Mamluk Empire (MSR XII.2, 2008) ↩︎
2. Stillman, Yedida Kalfon, and Norman A. Stillman. Arab Dress a Short History from the Dawn of Islam to Modern Times. Brill, 2000. ↩︎
3. Breitenbach, M. von B. auf. (1744). The Travels of Martin Baumgarten, a Nobleman of Germany, Through Egypt, Arabia, Palestine, and Syria. In Three Books. Giving an Account of the Situation, Nature, Monuments, and Ruins of Those Countries ; and of the Islands, Cities and Temples There-in ; of Their Manners and Customs ; of the Rise, Increase, and Actions of Some Foreign Princes: And of the Properties of Several Animals, with Other Useful Things. To which is Prefix’d the Life of the Author. N° 21 [-24]. Vol. I. ↩︎
4. Scarce, J. (2014) Women’s Costume of the Near and Middle East. 1st edn. Routledge. ↩︎
5. Atil, E. (1984). Mamluk Painting in the Late Fifteenth Century. Muqarnas, 2, 159–171. https://doi.org/10.2307/1523063 ↩︎
6. Behrens-Abouseif, D. (11 Oct. 2023). Dress and Dress Code in Medieval Cairo. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. ↩︎
7. Mubārak (Bāshā), ʻAlī. (1886). الخطط التوفيقية الجديدة لمصر القاهرة ومدنها وبلادها القديمة والشهيرة،. المطبعة الكبرى الاميرية ↩︎